


Let the sun be our witness

by Baryshnikov



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Nature, True Love, Young Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 09:34:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18914293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baryshnikov/pseuds/Baryshnikov
Summary: Draco considered it a privilege that he could stand out here, and think upon his three true loves until the sun blushed pink.





	Let the sun be our witness

**Author's Note:**

> This is nice-looking trash that was buzzing around in my head and wouldn’t let me sleep, so sorry if it isn’t great.

The sun was gold, that sparkling colour that seemed so simply magical that it was hard to believe it existed at all. But it did. The sun was gold and warm on Draco’s face as he watched it from the balcony, the cold of the stone seeping up and freezing his hands. Late spring was always a gorgeous time, the light scent of the flowers still drifted on the breeze, glazing everything they touched with a veneer of intangible beauty. Sometimes, the breeze would be strong enough to catch the petals that had been suspended between a leaf and a twig. When they were caught, they would float on the air, as blithe and beautiful as fairies themselves. 

Draco sighed. Seeing the gold of the sun shining and the grasses swaying always reminded him that he had lost many things in his life, like flowers losing their petals to the breeze. It was never dramatic, just slow, piece by piece being chipped away. It had begun with his childhood; life just stripped back to its bones, fading away like the colours in the clouds when the sun had abandoned the world. It shouldn’t have mattered now as it was so very long ago that he was child wandering paths alone, and running his fingers through the rose bushes before catching the tips on their thorns. It was a long time since he’d seen his fingers bleed like that, and he grateful because cutting your fingers on visible thorns was the sort of carelessness that he had tried to avoid in his life. 

Of course, carelessness had caught him out in other ways. It had stolen his heart like a thief in the night, more than once. Draco would say to anyone who asked that he had only been in love three times in his life, and they had all stood beside him, painted with this golden glow. It was here, out on the balcony that life seemed to clarify and crystallise, until the oil that had slicked his world turned to water, and he could see what he needed to do. Outside those white, when the wind could flutter through his hair and he could smile and laugh, or cry and sob, without anyone else knowing, was a safe space. It remained one of the few places not tainted, not contaminated and made ugly by the mould that, that had creature spread wherever he went. 

It was from the balcony that he had been witness to a whole host of wonders, pretty distractions that kept him alive when perhaps he would have rather been dead. He had seen the blooming of the roses, and the blossom falling from the trees. He had seen small birds attempt their first flight and butterflies float on the breeze, happy to drift through their existence with not a care in the world. Draco had always wished that he had been blessed to be a part of nature. He decided back when he was very young that he would have made a good common blue butterfly: interesting and beautiful, but still overlooked by everyone, or perhaps a daisy growing undisturbed in the grass. Draco swallowed and stared over at the sun. For it was too cold for butterflies by this time. 

Other things had happened on this balcony too. Love had happened. The careless way he had behaved with his heart, was painted all over this balcony, from the mere memories to the tiny initials, that he had craved into the stone, just to tell everyone that he had been young and in love once. Three people. Draco would not deny that he saw himself as privileged to have found three lovely people to share what was left of his heart with. For even when he was young, the world had already begun to deconstruct him, to slowly strip him back like a caterpillar, except he had no spare skin to emerge from, and he was just left out in this raw world, hoping that someone would take a little pity and share with him their heart. 

The first had been Pansy. He’d loved Pansy with the intensity that only first love can have. That sharpness in your stomach that feels like a cross between swallowing broken glass and the anticipation of diving into deep water. Their love had been young and scared and stupid, coloured with that clinical tint of the mildew of war. But no matter what, they’d had each other. He could still remember Pansy standing beside him, her harsh lines cutting through everything that she touched, scraping back every word to its core, and every emotion to its barest meaning. When the sun had cast its glow down on them, and she had stood, like an abstract painting, black harsh against the yellow of the clouds. Every part of her geometrically precise, from the curve of her mouth to the straight line of her back, he’d wanted to marry her. They were just teenagers and it didn’t mean anything really, but they’d made themselves rings out of black shoelaces, and put them on their fingers and held them to yellow clouds, knowing that if they died, then someone had loved them. 

Then, when the world had shifted came Astoria. She was different from Pansy. She was warmer, sweeter, like maple syrup poured on pancakes. With Astoria, it had been a slow passionate love, the sort that he didn’t realise he had fallen into until he was drowning in it. But she’d been there, drowning with him. Their love was about growing, changing, learning from the mistakes that had been made by those who had loved before them. Together they’d carved their names into the stone wall, both feeling guilty and excited and so much more mature than they really were. Their names were still there, Draco could trace her handwriting with his nails and remember how much he had loved her. How, when the sky had been as pink as candyfloss, and Astoria had stood there, elegant as a swan, he had asked her to marry him. Properly, with a ring the colour of her eyes. That day had been one of the happiest this balcony had seen, and even when she died, and he came here to sit under the grey of the sky that knew it had no right to be happy, there had still been that glimmer of love, and it was still here now. 

That too was a long time ago now, and Draco had honestly thought that he was done being careless with his heart. But there was someone new now. Someone else. A third lovely person that Draco had never thought could love someone like him, but he had underestimated Harry’s capacity to love. Under the warmth of the last streams of sun, he could recall all the smiles because that’s how all love should begin, with smiles across the room. He could remember the second that it became more than just smiles, the second that Harry had stumbled through a vague sentence that suggested they should go out sometime. And they had. Together they had sat together in the lunchbreaks, just talking had been a lovely feeling. And somehow, sometime had become all the time, and Draco had had the privilege of feeling giddy again; of feeling his heart be lost like petals in the wind. He realised he had fallen in love again, on a Saturday afternoon, standing in a busy café waiting for Harry to buy sandwiches. 

They’d kissed for the first time on this balcony. Their fingers meeting on the stone, and their lips meeting in the cold air above it. They’d just kissed, slow and lovely because they weren’t young anymore, and they had nothing to prove. It had been nice kissing until it was too cold to be outside because the sun had lowered itself behind the trees, as though it was embarrassed to be caught staring at them. Something else was going to happen here tonight, Draco had been thinking about it for a while, and it seemed right. He’d asked Scorpius over lunch one day, and then stood by his mother’s grave and asked her opinion even when she couldn’t give it. Draco breathed deeply. The gold of the sun was deepening now, a richness spilling out across the sky, like the world had been flipped and now cornfields grew from the clouds. 

Draco turned when the doors clunked and Harry with his usual gracelessness made his way out, rubbing his hands together because it was cold. They smiled at each other, and Harry came to stand and watch the last of the sun’s colours infuse the clouds with ever hue that could be made with yellow and orange and pink. Draco watched him, admired him, a solid entity against the sky, a real, tangible person that was so much more than one of the many memories that crowded out the balcony. Standing there, he reminded Draco of those statutes of great leaders, the ones that stood the test of time, a constant, protective, presence that never ceased. That was what Harry was, a guardian of the world that even the sun bowed to. Harry turned to him expectantly, and just for a second Draco felt as nervous as he had the first time 

“Will you marry me?”

The words were heavy on his tongue, and he was sure that he stumbled through them, much like Harry had stumbled into his life. He had a ring to accompany the request, because that was the proper thing to do, but it wasn’t in a box because their love had never felt like it needed a box to contain it. The band that he held between his fingers was gold like the sun and as bright as Harry’s smile, and Harry’s current smile was all he needed to know. All he thought that he was ever needed to get him through another day. Harry’s hands were chilled when they touched his own, but his lips were warm and his words were warm, and Draco didn’t mind that this time he had been careless with his heart. 

Out on the balcony, they stood together; two souls founded in grey but now coloured with gold. Just the two of them, standing with their hands touching, and the songs of birds the only sound. The light was fading, and the ribbons of pink and gold and peach tapering off across the clouds. And when they stood there, with promises wrapped around their fingers, they knew that love was still real, and it was still beautiful.


End file.
